Editor's Note

The Charge

The top rated series from History returns to DVD!

The Case

In a perfect world, a pawnshop would be a non-descript warehouse where people
who need money go and temporarily exchange their goods for cash. When they made
more money, they'd get their goods back. Of course that doesn't happen every
time, so pawn shops have to be places where goods which are never reclaimed can
be sold by the pawnbroker. Since they're selling goods it makes sense to cut out
the middleman and become outright buyers. Thus we get a show like Pawn
Stars which takes place in a pawnshop but might as well take place in an
antique store for all the actual pawning going on. Whether they're buying,
selling, or pawning, these pawn stars offer an effective mix of information and
entertainment.

The show is a family affair, following the exploits of The Harrisons, as
they deal with customers at the Gold and Silver Pawn shop in Las Vegas. Each
episode features a variety of customers who come in with items they're hoping
will be valuable. We get to see the guys learn about the items, value them, and
then haggle with the sellers to reach a mutually-agreeable price. Pawn Stars:
Volume Four includes 16 episodes, the final ten of Season Three and the
first six of Season Four.

Reality series such as these work on three levels: surprise, education, and
personality. Lucky for us, Pawn Stars balances all three.

• Surprise. Storage
Wars and American Pickers
build a lot of tension by having their characters go out in search of goods to
sell. Each time a locker is opened or a new barn is approached there's the
possibility for new discoveries. In contrast, Gold and Silver Pawn is always in
the same place. That means there's a little less of the surprise and tension
found in other shows (save for the haggling phase), but the producers can
cherry-pick the best finds to air. It's obvious that Gold and Silver gets a lot
of foot traffic, so they have plenty of options to choose from and pretty much
everything we see is interesting in some way.

• Education. Though this isn't a show about history per
se, it does offer a lot of info and trivia. The Harrisons are pretty
knowledgeable about many kinds of items, and when they don't know they're
perfectly willing to call in experts to help. That info gets passed on us, and
though most of it is trivia (rather than solid historical data) it keeps the
show informative and entertaining.

• Personality. The guys behind the counter are family, and
that comes through clearly in their jovial but critical attitudes towards each
another. It's easy to get a sense of who these guys are, but they're not the
focus of the show; the items for sale and the deal take center stage, rather
than the buyers. Sure, The Harrisons are used in talking head interviews, but
for sharing information not confessions. And while some of the buyers are
characters, they're really just people who think they have something of
value.

If antique-style shows aren't your thing, there's nothing about Pawn
Stars that will change your mind. The shows can get a bit same-y after a
while, and the repetition can get tedious.

Presented in standard definition 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, Pawn
Stars: Volume Four looks and sounds fine. The transfer is clean and bright
with no obvious compression artifacts. The Dolby 2.0 Stereo audio keeps the
haggling clearly understandable and well balanced with the ambient sounds of the
shop. There are no extras.

Pawn Stars: Volume Four is a fine release, if you can forgive the
weird splitting of Seasons Three and Four over multiple sets. Since there's not
much of a learning curve, this is a fine place for the curious to start.